ENNUI
Pierre stared at his companion with almost open-mouthed astonishment.
"I? A dance?"
And then his head tilted back and he laughed.
"My good times, Dick, come out of the hills and the sky-line, and the
gallop of Mary. But as for women, they bore me, Dick."
"Even Jack?"
"She's more man than woman."
It was the turn of Wilbur to laugh, and he responded uproariously until
Pierre frowned and flushed a little.
"When I see you out here on your horse with your rifle in the boot and
your six-gun swinging low in the scabbard, and riding the fastest bit
of horse-flesh on the ranges," explained Wilbur, "I get to thinking
that you're pretty much king of the mountains; but in certain respects,
Pierre, you're a child. Ha, ha, ha! a regular infant."
Pierre stirred uneasily in his saddle. A man must be well over thirty
before he can withstand ridicule.
He said dryly: "I've an idea that I know Jack about as well as the next
man."
"Let it drop," said Wilbur, sober again, for he shared with all of
Boone's crew a deep-rooted unwillingness to press Red Pierre beyond a
certain point. "The one subject I won't quarrel about is Jack, God
bless her."
"She's the best pal," said Pierre soberly, "and the nearest to a man
I've ever met."
"Nearest to a man?" queried Wilbur, and smiled, but so furtively that
even the sharp eye of Red Pierre did not perceive the mockery. He went
on:
"But the dance, what of that? It's a masquerade. There'd be no fear
of being recognized."
Pierre was silent a moment more. Then he said:
"This girl--what did you call her?"
"Mary."
"And about her hair--I think you said it was black?"
"Golden, Pierre."
"Mary, and golden hair," mused Red Pierre. "I think I'll go to that
dance."
"With Jack? She dances wonderfully, you know."
"Well--with Jack."
So they reached a tumbled ranch-house squeezed between two hills so
that it was sheltered from the storms of the winter but held all the
heat of the summer.
Once it had been a goodly building, the home of some cattle-king. But
bad times had come.
A bullet in a saloon brawl put an end to the cattle king, and now his
home was a wreck of its former glory. The northern wing shelved down
to the ground as if the building were kneeling to the power of the
wind, and the southern portion of the house, though still erect, seemed
tottering and rotten throughout and holding together until at a final
blow the whole structure would crumple at once.
To the stables, hardly less ruinous than the big house, Pierre and
Wilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them from
the stalls. To look down that line of magnificent heads raised above
the partitions of the stalls was like glancing into the stud of some
crowned head who made hunting and racing his chief end in life, for
these were animals worthy of the sport of kings.
They were chosen each from among literal hundreds and thousands, and
they were cared for far more tenderly than the masters cared for
themselves. There was a reason in it, for upon their speed and
endurance depended the life of the outlaw. Moreover, the policy of Jim
Boone was one of actual "long riding."
Here he had come to a pause for a few days to recuperate his horses and
his men. To-morrow, perhaps, he would be on the spur again and
sweeping off to a distant point in the mountain desert to strike and be
gone again before the rangers knew well that he had been there. Very
rarely did one settler have another neighbor at a distance of less than
two hundred miles. It meant arduous and continual riding, and a horse
with any defect was worse than useless because the speed of the gang
had to be the speed of the slowest horse in the lot.
It was some time before the two long riders had completed the grooming
of their horses and had gone down the hill and into the house. In the
largest habitable room they found a fire fed with rotten timbers from
the wrecked portion of the building, and scattered through the room a
sullen and dejected group: Mansie, Branch, Jim Boone, and Black Morgan
Gandil.
At a glance it was easy to detect their malady; it was the horrible
ennui which comes to men who are always surrounded by one set of faces.
If a man is happily married he may bear with his wife and his children
constantly through long stretches of time, but the glamour of life lies
in the varying personalities which a man glimpses in passing, but never
knows.
This was a rare crew. Every man of them was marked for courage and
stamina and wild daring. Yet even so in their passive moments they
hated each other with a hate that passed the understanding of common
men.
Through seven years they had held together, through fair weather and
foul, and now each knew from the other's expression the words that were
about to be spoken, and each knew that the other was reading him, and
loathing what he read.
So they were apt to relapse into long silences unless Jack was with
them, for being a woman her variety was infinite, or Pierre le Rouge,
whom all except Black Gandil loved and petted, and feared.
They were a battered crowd. Wind and hard weather and a thousand suns
had marked them, and the hand of man had branded them. Here and there
was a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each were
lines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression of
infinite and wistful yearning.
"What's up? What's wrong?" asked Wilbur from the door, but since no
answer was deigned he said no more.
But Pierre, like a charmed man who dares to walk among lions, strolled
easily through the room, and looked into the face of big Boone, who
smiled faintly up to him, and Black Gandil, who scowled doubly dark,
and Bud Mansie, who shifted uneasily in his chair and then nodded, and
finally to Branch. He dropped a hand on the massive shoulder of the
blacksmith.
"Well?" he asked.
Branch let himself droop back into his chair. His big, dull, colorless
eyes stared up to his friend.
"I dunno, lad. I'm just weary with the sort of tired that you can't
help by sleepin'. Understand?"
Pierre nodded, slowly, because he sympathized. "And the trouble?"
Branch stared about as if searching for a reason.
"Jack's up-stairs sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet."
And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A man
that saves a ship-wrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks."
Pierre turned a considering eye on him, and Gandil scowled back.
"You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck that
would come to Jim from saving me out of the snow. It's never happened,
has it?"
Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's
Patterson?"
"Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk some place?"
"Patterson doesn't get drunk--not that way. And he knows that we were
to start again to-day."
"There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch.
"It's the straight dope. Patterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie.
The booming bass of Jim Boone broke in: "Shut up, the whole gang of
you. We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us. Who
calls him a Jonah?"
And Black Gandil answered: "I do. I've sailed the seas. I know bad
luck when I see it."
"You've been seeing it for six years."
"The worst storms come on a voyage that starts with fair weather.
Patterson? He's gone; he ain't just delayed; he's gone."
It was not the first of these gloomy prophecies which Gandil had made,
but each time a heavy gloom broke over Red Pierre. For when he summed
up the good fortune which the cross of Father Victor had brought him,
he found that he had gained a father, and lost him at their first
meeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it had
cost the life of another man almost at once. The horse which carried
him away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way and he
had been saved from the landslide, but the girl had perished.
He had driven McGurk from the ranges, and where would the penalty fall
on those who were near and dear to him? In a superstitious horror he
had asked himself the question a thousand times, and finally he could
hardly bear to look into the ominous, brooding eyes of Black Gandil.
It was as if the man had a certain and evil knowledge of the future.